1. Field
The disclosed and claimed concept relates generally to handheld electronic devices and, more particularly, to a handheld electronic device and method that enable spell checking in a text disambiguation environment.
2. Background Information
Numerous types of handheld electronic devices are known. Examples of such handheld electronic devices include, for instance, personal data assistants (PDAs), handheld computers, two-way pagers, cellular telephones, and the like. Many handheld electronic devices also feature wireless communication capability, although many such handheld electronic devices are stand-alone devices that are functional without communication with other devices.
Certain handheld electronic devices have been configured to have a plurality of characters, i.e., a plurality of Latin letters, assigned to each key and have employed disambiguation software in one form or another to disambiguate ambiguous text input. Such handheld electronic devices have been referred to as having a “reduced” keyboard, and such reduced keyboards and disambiguation software enable a handheld electronic device to have a relatively form factor, i.e., to be physically small. While such devices have been generally effective for their intended purposes, such devices have not, however, been without limitation.
One limitation that exists with reduced keyboards and disambiguation software is in the area of spell checking. Since most any keystroke on a reduced keyboard can refer to any of a plurality of characters, an incorrectly typed word typically will be disambiguated by the disambiguation software in a form quite different than what was originally intended by the user. While efforts have been made to adapt certain spell checking algorithms for use in a disambiguation environment, such efforts have had limited success due to the ambiguity inherent in text input on a reduced keyboard. Moreover, the adaptation of spell checking algorithms to handheld electronic devices has had limited success due to the large processing capacity that typically is consumed by known spell checking algorithms and methodologies. It thus would be desirable to provide an improved spell checking routine and handheld electronic device that overcome these and other limitations.
Similar numerals refer to similar parts throughout the specification.